Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to multimedia recording and retrieval. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method, an apparatus and a system for quality management, regulation compliance, and business intelligence in financial institutions, in particular.
Discussion of the Related Art
Financial institutes are operate under strict laws, rules and regulations designed to protect both the financial institutes and investors from fraudulent financial activities, such as money laundering, terror funding, theft, misconduct and other similar wrongdoing.
The regulations require that financial institutes keep the records of the various interactions carried out between various personnel for a pre-specified period of time for the purposes of regulation compliance and for the resolution of dispute situations. A dispute is typically resolved by the re-construction of the transaction-specific interactions among the parties. Such re-construction is typically accomplished by obtaining one or more recordings representing the transaction-specific interactions, and by re-playing recordings.
The completion of certain financial transactions may involve the performance of multiple interactions between the participating parties. A multiple interaction refers to the performance of more than one interaction during the same transaction. Multiple interactions may be of the same interaction type or could include different interaction types. One example, of a multiple interaction type is a conversation between two parties that involves capturing of voice over IP and instant messaging between the same parties, the interaction resulting in a transaction.
Presently available recording systems have several disadvantages. The major drawback of existing systems concern the complete and total separation of the various recording sub-systems and the resulting complete lack of automatic connectivity options there between. Each interaction type associated with a specific communication channel is handled separately by a specific recording sub-system. Presently, there is no connectivity and users must search manually through the various archives of the separate sub-systems and attempt manually to associate interaction records to a relevant transaction. When a dispute situation arises there is a need to locate, to obtain, to connect and to integrate the entire set of interaction types captured during the performance of the transaction.
A second drawback of the existing systems and methods relate to the security of the information as presently no mechanisms exists to prevent unauthorized persons to gain access to the information.
A further drawback of the currently operating systems concern the lack of time synchronization option among the separate sub-systems and therefore the lack of time synchronization between the interactions recorded therein. The temporal order of the interactions is particularly important in the processing of a transaction and the time synchronization of the interactions associated with a specific transaction is essential to the resolving of a dispute situation. Existing systems do not provide for multimedia interaction handling in such a manner that all interactions are synchronized and played back in the correct sequence of the events
Financial institutes attempting to comply with the regulations face additional problems. One problem regards the fact that the majority of the initial interactions in a trading floor do not necessarily lead up to an actual financial transaction. It is an additional drawback of the currently existing recording systems that presently no differential identification can be made between informal calls and calls that lead up to a transaction.
Presently, each financial transaction stored in the bank's dealing systems is assigned a unique identifier in a manual manner. In many cases the terms of the transaction are specified during the interactions, but the actual entering of the transaction into the bank's dealing systems is usually made only after the interaction is terminated. As a result the identifier assigned to the transaction in the bank's system has not yet existed at that point in time where the interaction was performed. The lack of connectivity and association between the transactions recorded in the bank's dealing systems and the interactions through which the transaction was originated often forces, internal auditors to examine large volumes recorded interactions manually until a suitable call is located. By allowing accurate location of the interaction records related to each transaction, the same auditing teams using the same resources could be more efficient and audit more transactions.
In addition, financial institution archives storing recorded customer-specific interactions contain a plurality of confidential information. Today, although financial institutes make substantial efforts to limit access to these archives there is often an urgent need to locate customer-specific interactions. Existing systems do not provide an automated solution for playback request handling while maintaining secrecy, privacy and controlled access to interactions. Financial institutions are also required to operate in accordance with specifically pre-defined rules of conduct. Supervisors must examine the interactions in order to make sure that the rules of conduct are implemented. Currently no efficient method exists to detect cases where the rules of conduct are not followed except through manual handling of a vast amount of phone calls or recordings.
The rules of conduct recommend that details of all telephone deals should be confirmed by fax or by similar means however there is no efficient method presently to detect the presence or the lack of the suitable confirmation procedures other than unstructured manual access to the archives and listening to vast amount of calls or recordings.
Day trading for personal accounts is one example of a situation that requires full disclosure and transparency in order to ensure that traders give undivided attention to their institution's business, without being distracted by personal conflict of interests. There is no method currently to detect such cases other than unstructured manual access to the archives and listening to vast amount of calls or recordings.
It would be readily perceived by one with ordinary skills in the art that the current systems do not provide efficient solutions for financial institutions. Therefore, there is need for a novel integrated multimedia capturing and logging system for financial institutions. Such a system should preferably handle all the applicable media type interactions and should retain the various media type interactions in an integrative, synchronized and associated manner. The captured and logged elements would preferably comprise precisely timed and synchronized sequences of events in order to assist in the proper resolution of dispute situations, in dispute settlement and in the general identification of misconduct. The system would preferably include advanced tools, such as audio and data content analysis for the processing of the recorded interactions for the purposes of regulation compliance, dispute resolution, and advanced content analysis.